1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wiper system.
2. Description of Related Art
In a known type of wiper system, two wiper blades reciprocally wipe a wiping surface of, for example, a front window glass of a vehicle. When each of the wiper blades are placed at a swing movement turning position (hereinafter, simple referred to as “turning position”) thereof, the wiper blades are arranged parallel to each other such that overlapping portions of the wiper blades are overlapped with each other to form an overlapped section. Particularly, in a case of an opposed pattern wiper system, two wiper arms (more specifically the wiper arms and wiper blades connected thereto) are reciprocally swung in opposite directions, respectively, to wipe the wiping surface. Thus, at one turning position, the wiper blades are arranged parallel to each other and form the longitudinally overlapped section.
When the above wiper system is arranged at a lower part of the front window glass of the vehicle, the overlapping portions of the two wiper blades are overlapped with each other to form an overlapped section at a lower turning position. When the two wiper blades are constructed to form the overlapped section at the lower turning position, the wiper blades may possibly interfere with each other at the time of starting the wiping movement or at the time of turning at the lower turning position. In order to limit the interferences, a space needs to be provided between the wiper blades at the lower turning position. This may possibly deteriorate the appearance of the vehicle at the time of stopping the wiping movement or at the time of performing the wiping.
In order to address the above disadvantage, Japanese Patent No. 2888651 proposes the opposed pattern wiper system, which makes turning of one of two wiper blades at a location that is upwardly spaced a predetermined distance from a lower turning position of the other one of the wiper blades. Then, at the time of stopping the wiper blades, the one of the wiper blades is pivoted to a stop position, which is placed around the lower turning position of the other one of the wiper blades.
That is, the stop position of the one of the wiper blades is located below its turning position. At the time of stopping the wiping movement, only the one of the wiper blades is further pivoted downward to store it in close proximity to the other one of the wiper blades. In this way, appearance of this wiper system at the time of stopping its wiping movement is improved.
Furthermore, in the above wiper system, at the time of staring the wiping movement, the one of the wiper blades, which is located above the other one of the wiper blades, is moved from the stop position to the lower turning position while the other one of the wiper blades is still held in the lower turning position. In this way, the substantial space is provided between the wiper blades in the wiping direction, and thereafter, the wiping movement of the wiper blades is started. In this way, even when the overlapped section is formed in the turning position or the stop position, the wiping movement of the wiper blades can be started without causing substantial interferences therebetween.
However, in the case of the wiper system, which is disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 2888651, although the two wiper blades are placed close to each other at the time of stopping the wiping movement, the wiper blades are still arranged one after the other in a width direction of the wiper blades to form the overlapped section. Thus, the wiper arms (the wiper arms and the blades) are still conspicuous, and an improvement in terms of appearance is still required.
Furthermore, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. H11-43019 (corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 6,038,728) discloses a wiper system of a tandem type that wipes a front window glass of a vehicle and includes two wipers, each of which has a common wiping direction. In general, in such a wiper system of the tandem type, a wiper blade of each wiper is stopped at a lower turning position (a position at which the wiper blade is placed to extend generally parallel to a transverse direction of the vehicle) of its reciprocal wiping movement or is stopped at a storage position, which is separately set at a lower part of the front window glass, which is below the lower turning position.
However, in the stopped state of the above wiper system, the wipers can be clearly recognizable as separate wipers, so that the wipers provide a nonintegrated impression of the wipers and are conspicuous. Therefore, appearance of the part of vehicle, at which the wipers are placed, is deteriorated.